failquicker

I'm really into metal casting. Got into a few years ago by bastardizing a kiln I found on craigslist. Have since moved on to building my own propane furnaces and rigging old microwaves to melt copper. I don't know that I'm actually any "good" at it, but I do enjoy it a lot. I like working with a material that you have to respect highly or it will burn a hole straight through you. And I have been able to cast some rudimentary parts(housings, pulllies) that have been used on other hackeresque projects.

I can back this up as being a true statement. He regularly plays bridge (and ping pong)on the Sunday following the Shareholders meeting. He does it out in public for people to watch. He is also a pretty strong advocate of the game.

Wow. What a great weekend project. I think you hit the nail on the head with this one man. Definite problem, definite solution. The only two issues I see with the site are really pretty superficial. And I would be surprised if you weren't already aware.

1) the email us gambit, I think it comes off as a little scamy. My guess is it's just there for simplicity right now, but I could be missing something (happens often) A way you could think of doing it that may be more palatable to your customers is to have a download button and make the user register with you before the download. Even if the result is the same, I think the psychological impact of the email request being 1 more step in would increase conversion. All just my opinion.

2) is pretty silly. Just site aesthetic. I wouldn't currently order from that page if I randomly happened upon it. Just trying to review it in the form o saw it. I'm sure you already have that worked out.

REALLY great idea.

I'm outbin DC. And the facebook privacy implications are HUGE buzz right now. Lots of non tech savy people in politics and it's ancilary industries are simply deleting (or trying to delete) their profile. Your app could get a great response if you can get it in front of them. I see it getting passed along in professional circles.

What is your plan for marketing it? Any plan for monetization?

Thanks for letting us review.

Well said sir.

I can't speak for anyone else. But for me, I truly started getting happy when I started "Reveling in Simplicity" Not in a superficial way, not in the "minimal is cool" way. But in the I really don't need much to be happy way.

I've moved a LOT. I was in the military. And once I got out, I has a string of businesses I started all over the US. And I use to carry these boxes of "STUFF" with me. My wife too. We had all this crap, that was soooooo important to us. But half the time we never even bothered to unpack it. Finally, we both came to our senses, and sold, gave, or threw most of it away.

I hear people talk about "Golden Handcuffs" I know what you mean. I had them. But you know what, I was able to shake them too. So maybe they're not handcuffs. Just decorations. That we like so much we won't take them off. But we can.

My family is great now. We live on so much less. And our quality of life is through the roof! If my family was a startup, we would have so much runway our competitors would be shaking in their boots. And just like a startup, that gives you a lot of freedom to experiment.

I love to experiment.

Simplicity is the key to happiness. At least that's my opinion. Sorry for the rant in the comments. Didn't mean for it to go on so long.

I'm the same way. I use to have a "running mix" on my iphone. But one day the earphones broke and I just listened to the sounds around me. It really helped me relax. Almost like a moving meditation. I definitely recommend the music-less run!

I am not the OP, but that is an amazing idea. I remember those baby emails, and can just imagine screenshots of baby kale and turnips. Op, you really should do this. It would be amazing.

Mine is running. You don't have to do much prep, and you can do it anywhere. It's great because it works well in groups like a running club or a race. But it is also amazing to just take off and clear your head all by yourself.

I've met a surprising amount of founders that run.

I think he was saying that he couldn't get the office doors to lock, so instead of leaving it unlocked or calling an emergency locksmith he crashed a the office until it was business hours and he could get the door fixed.

How many of you have physically slept on the floor at your business while it was growing? I know I regularly camped out on the floor of my office when we were getting things up and running. I'd work so late it just didn't make sense to go home and then turn right around to come back in. We even had a utility closet that we set a cot up in that was utilized like an "on call crash pad" during business hours.

I would bet interested in hearing how many people have done this and how often.

Aaron gave and amazing keynote at this years Bootstrap MD. I talked to him after he spoke and thought that he was a really interesting and accessible guy.

He has a great philosophy about dealing with failure. Obviously no one goes out with the intention to fail,but we all have some level of failure. Be it a small setback or a startup crashing and burning. Aaron's keynote talked about being able to deal with the stresses involved in that failure, own it, and come out the other side without losing momentum. Sort of a higher level of Rocky Balboa saying it's "Not how hard you can hit, it's how hard you can get hit and keep going." I'm sure my abstract of his talk is not nearly as inspiring, but his keynote really set the tone for a great startup event.

Glad to see him on Mixergy. Thanks Andrew for another great interview.

I had my own idea for dealing with this phenomenon. After reading your post I decided to try and make it a reality instead of an idea.

MiniLeap: A pickup game for startups

www.MiniLeap.com

I'm currently at The Berkshire Shareholders Meeting weekend. Warren led the meeting off with his long talk on Goldman. I think the main thing that he was trying to drive home that is not getting reported is that there is a difference between being "accused" of wrong doing and actually having done something wrong.

He did go to great lengths to explain how he interpreted the goings on at Goldman. He even compared it to a recent blind bond insurance deal that Berkshire had made. And in his opinion, according to the information he had available, it didn't seem like there was any wrong doing on the part of Goldman.

However, he was very clear that if the ACCUSATION of impropriety became proof of wrong doing that he would have a different stance on the matter.

I'm just reporting what I heard him say. Interpret as you wish. As for the side that says he has a conflict of interest in this matter, he also said his investment in Goldman is paying $15 a second. I know that would be a conflict of interest for me, but I am not Warren Buffett.

Well how I see it, the Airlines are losing money. Not the travel search sites. They still take their cut no matter what the margins look like for the underlying airlines. And it is a lot of revenue, even if not a lot of profit(I doubt that, but don't have relavent experience/documentation to back that up). And at the very least the travel search itself brings a LOT of eyeballs, which google has interest in.

On an unrelated note, ATI's co-founder Dave Baggett was on the founding team for the original "Crash Bandicoot"...which is awesome.

I agree that this is a most beneficial/therapeutic exercise. I started doing it 5 years ago, and it has helped immensely. I am much more agile now.

Something else that I have done is keep a "junk journal" where I have taken a picture of all of the stuff that I have sold/donated/given away. After a few years you can look back and go "Wow...I really had a ton of crap"

It's funny how we think we own stuff, but it can really own us.

So do you think Kevin is a lame duck over there? I think most people can't fathom digg.com without Kevin Rose. So him becoming chairman and interim CEO will be viewed as a positive to a lot of people, myself included. Even if the VC have control of the board, don't you think Kevin will have a better position to exert influence as chairman? I would be very interested to hear your opinion on this. If that's ok (trying not to fanboy out)

"Kevin Rose back in the drivers seat" would have worked well. It seems to me that's a pretty rare occurrence, with a founder taking the reigns again after several years. Good for Digg!

Let me first say that killing unarmed ANYONE is wrong. And that I did get queezie watching this video. We are suppose to be better than this. That being said, war is not clean. It is not merely a set of commands and rules that are followed where everything turns out ok. It is horrible.

I have been in the smoke of war. Crazy things happen out there. Sometimes, there are children with guns and bombs too. And those bullets kill just as well. It is easy to make mistakes when you're in an area where there are very real threats to your life and the lives of your friends all around. Even so, they are MISTAKES. I don't believe these pilots felt as though they were murdering these people. I'm sure at the time they felt they were dealing with a real threat. But they made egregious errors in judgement and caused a terrible tragedy because of those mistakes.

But there is another tragedy in this case. In the military there is a process called an "After Action Review" that is suppose to be done after EVERY mission. It is a time to look back on what happened, talk openly, and analyse how things could have been handled better. The military could have used this horrid event as a way to change training and tactics to prevent things like this from happening in the future. In just a few hours of being released on the net, there are already scores of dissection and analysis about how things could have been done differently. Imagine if tactical analysts had reviewed this and in theater pilot briefings were changed to reflect the results of that review. Imagine if the military had actually acted in good faith on this event instead of trying to cover it up. This is 2010. The event happened in 2007. And still they did not release the video. It had to be leaked.

In cases like this where mistakes were made, the government loses any credibility to "mitigating circumstances" when they try to cover it up.

I hope one day the military can be more transparent with this sort of action.

I hope one day that we don't need an organization like wikileaks, but I am so glad we have them right now.

And most of all, I hope we aren't going to be watching a similar video in 2013 of a similar event that happened this week.

"black solution of boron" is a bit ubiquitous. But there are enough forms of boron readily available on the market that several "likely candidate" test batches could be produced easily. And your oven will go to 1000C, just not your conventional oven. Your microwave oven will hit 1000C and beyond, you'll just need to tape off the air vent and use a refractory of some sort. I've use silicon carbide and ceramic weave to melt copper in my microwave. It's melting point is just north of 1000C. So cheap walmart T's + boron + a freecycle microwave and you could be on your way to a kickass new startup. Let me know when you start the seed round.

I couldn't agree more.

"I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend. " - Thomas Jefferson

Unfortunately, the Us vs. THEM mentality seems to be propagating more and more these days. "Divide and Conquer" isn't just a military strategy. It's a highly successful way for keeping a population from moving forward in many ways. I live in the DC metro area and have seen a "Democrats need not apply" sign up in a store front. I think it was meant to be humorous, but it's still fairly screwed up.

"Disliking or hating something conditions you to (1) ignore virtues in the disliked, (2) dislike people, products, and actions associated with the disliked, and (3) distort other facts to facilitate hatred.

Startups should focus on their customers, not their competition—whom they may dislike." -This is #3 on VentureHacks cheat sheet of point from "The Psychology of Entrepreneurial Misjudgment"

I'm not sure that I agree with that. Niches have popped up and thrived middle of the road in markets that paypal vacated. Adult content and gambling come immediately to mind. So if they weren't getting the wide net traction they were after, they probably could have focused the beam into a successful niche. Who knows, If things went differently paypal could be working the neteller circuit of transactions.